Biography

A musical career takes many surprise turns. After a career as a jazz bassist and composer that began in the mid 1970s, Brian Torff now creates music as a songwriter, guitarist and vocalist. He has played with Frank Sinatra, George Shearing, Mary Lou Williams, Erroll Garner, Stephane Grappelli, and Marian McPartland among others. Torff now focuses on acoustic guitar, harmonica, loop pedal, and his upright stick bass to create a different sound. As a Professor of Music at Fairfield University since 1993, his research trips to the deep South have impacted the lyrical stories.

 Brian Torff has written a jazz memoir, In Love With Voices, and his most recent book, Seize the Beat: The Evolution of American Music is used in his classes on American popular music. Torff explains, “I love working with words, so songwriting was a logical next step.” Drawing on his experience in jazz, blues, and rock, combined with a county-folk influence, Brian Torff feels that “we need to create new musical categories.”

 His band, with Wes Lewis, tenor saxophone, and Ryan Sands, drums, plans to shoot YouTube music videos this year, “I hope that our music,” says Torff, “is a soundtrack to an American road trip, past and present.”

Brian Q. Torff has performed at the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, the White House, the Royal Albert Hall, the NBC Tonight show, a CBS national holiday special, and PBS. English critic Harry Giltrap wrote of his bass playing, “Torff is a self-contained orchestra.”

His book “Seize the Beat: The Evolution of American Music,” was published in 2023 by McFarland Press.